Analogs of Vysotsky: my replies II

Mon Feb 10 03:21:19 UTC 2014

If you'd like to get into Tom Waits start with Rain Dogs. It's his best album all around. If you like it then movie on to Frank's Wild Years or Real Gone, also from a Vysotsky perspective maybe his album Mule Variations. He's actually my favourite musician so I will start gushing if I don't stop. He is a lover of old jazz-era terminology and really latches on to odd news stories and strange turns-of-phrase that he hears in cafes, &c.  After learning all of this, perhaps Tom Waits IS the American Vysotsky. 
Here's a good taste of a really pure Tom Waits song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwhxjP63ysk

and here's a clip of him acting in one of his many film roles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpEBOavYqHQ

Thanks for the music conversation.

Dorian Jurić, MA
McMaster Univeristy

Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2014 21:25:03 +0000
From: thysentinel at HOTMAIL.COM
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Analogs of Vysotsky:  my replies II
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU

V:  I hope everyone is enjoying this conversation as much as I am.

> Well I'm definitely learning things about Vysotsky I did not know (and probably putting my foot in my mouth a few times> over it). I've always been more familiar with his music than his biography, had no idea he was so involved in theater.

V:  You probably know more about Vysotsky than I know about Waits and Cohen. :)  Which brings me to my request:  what would you recommend in their works from the Vysotsky lover perspective?

> I guess my reservations with Waits and Cohen lie less in these factoids and more in the tone or feel of their work. When I listen to Vysotsky I've always felt a really strong folk aesthetic to his work and, if I understand correctly, when he wrote songs about the down-and-outs those people held those songs as representing them in some ways. Cohen and Waits have always been a bit bourgeois about their take on the down-and-outs. 
V:  I think I know what you mean.  But, if I am right, Vysotsky fits here too.  He was, in fact, not a blue color everyman's singer and certainly not a criminal.  Johnny Cash, for all his prison sentiments, never did time either.  Vysotsky was, in his heart, a very aristocratic person (not a bourgeois by any stretch), but far from most of his characters.  This is why his genre is sometimes referred to as "character songs":  he played a part, each time a new one.  And I'm just talking about his exploits into the world of airplanes, beasts, etc.

> Cohen (who I will also point out is not an American but a fellow Canadian) continues to sell out concerts, but it is to a particular crowd, and the majority of them are the same crowd he sold out to in the 70s. He's lauded as a great poet, and his books of poetry sell as well as his records, but they always seem to be bought by those who grew up with him, or else college students engaged in creative writing circles.
> Waits on the other hand, has made his name by being weird and eclectic. The experimental aspects of his music are often first and foremost. He not only writes theatrical music, but the music sounds like a play when it is listened to, like the characters are caricatures that were made up to display an allegory. His down-and-outs are stage versions, the real dock workers and ditch diggers have never connected with him. His characters are one-eyed midgets shooting pool in the Philippines while a sailor looks at a cameo of his wife. Waits chooses to wear different characters as singer too, in one song he's Howlin' Wolf, in the next he's Hank Williams, after that he's Captain Beefheart or Aretha Franklin. His albums all have separate tones, and each song has its own flavour. Wait's following is less his own generation and more the younger people who crave something fresh and alternative. He's like someone's grandfather that managed to stay hip and cool and so is (obviously) the best grandfather. To think of Vysotsky picking up beat-boxing at age 60 seems really strange to me.

V:  Sorry,  I don't know what beat-boxing is.  But Vysotsky was ALWAYS out for new experiences.  Of course, he could never make it to 60.  Wrong lifestyle.  In fact, I'm surprised Waits has made it to the old age.

> Unless I'm way out to lunch, I always saw Vysotsky more like a Steve Earle figure, political and engaged, and when he sang about peoples' lots in life and their hard times, those people found it rang true, heard themselves in the music. That's why Bob Marley sounds right to me too, and Guthrie and Springsteen. But I fully admit that I'm learning aspects of Vysotsky I had no idea about. 
V:  Again, I don't know who Steve Earle is.  But no matter how true his characters sounded to the public, Vysotsky was almost ALWAYS playing a part:  a part of a soldier, sailor, peasant, inmate, trucker, miner, knight, warplane, microphone, wolf, etc.  Like someone said, it was his acting that made him sound so relevant and credible... but not the movie / theatrical acting, but the acting in his SONGS.

> In regard to Dylan having an limited impact, primarily on the American intelligentsia, I respectfully disagree.  Dylan's impact on mainstream American and British pop from the sixties through at least the nineties is incalculable, both in terms of his style of elliptical songwriting, genre mixing and vocal phrasing...  I think Dylan's lasting impact on contemporary anglophone musical culture is actually no less significant than Vysotsky's on its Russian counterpart.
V:  Actually, everything you said, reinforces my own opinion.  All those people you listed pretty much constitutes Anglo-American "creative class."  Dylan's impact on other musicians is incalculable and undeniable.  But common public, especially 50 years later?  Like I said, Vysotsky keeps appearing in modern Russian hit parades.  Dylan?  Only among Williamsburg hipsters, I'm afraid :)

2. About Dylan's untutored and crude style of singing. Here again is an area in which his and Vysotsky's creative paths might be seen as running parallel to each other. Over a periods of several years, both singers learned how to channel the guttural  quality of their voices into highly theatricalized styles of singing, evident in songs such as Dylan's "Tangled Up in Blue" and Vysotsky's "Dialog u televizora."
V:  Again, Dylan had all the effect in the world on other writers, performers, musicians, etc.  Grebenschikov owns his entire career to Dylan.  But the universality and the longevity of his appeal are, IMHO, limited.

> I would never say Lennon was "washed up" in the 70s. He was just going in a different direction, both personally and professionally. The Beatles themselves were always changing, constantly transforming themselves, and Lennon continued this after their breakup. I personally think his inner strength, his ability to show his vulnerability, his fight for world peace all brought a more powerful, although perhaps quieter, more "peaceful" element to his music.
V:  Laura, I intend to listen to Lennon's entire 70s catalog at some point.  I admit I always prefer The Beatles' songs, especially those by McCartney :)
V:  So let me redo my ranking.  From what I gathered, Bob Marley should be ranked higher.  Even though I have a hard time believing his popularity outranks Springsteen's, but other aspects make Springsteen rank lower.
1. Lennon

2. Dylan

3. Morrison

4. Marley

5. Cash

6. Springsteen

7. Cohen

8. Waits

9. Pete Seeger
How does this sound?
Vadim 		 	   		  
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